


Ring in the True

by vysila



Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vysila/pseuds/vysila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a pinch-hit for Down the Chimney Affair 2012 fiction gift exchange. Napoleon and Illya celebrate New Year's Eve in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ring in the True

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Avery11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avery11/gifts).



> Prompts were: snowfall, missed connections and a pair of eyeglasses

When the telephone rang, I guessed it was the deli ringing back about my order. I certainly didn't expect to hear Napoleon's cheerful voice.

"Illya? Bundle up, tovarisch, we have things to do and places to go."

"Aren't you supposed to be on a date?" I asked, glancing at my watch. Nearly 11 pm.

"Aren't you supposed to be having…" I heard the faint rustle of paper through the phone, "… a double-decker pastrami on rye, with pickle and chips?"

I sighed. "Why did you hijack my dinner?"

"You'll never know unless you come down here."

"And just where is here?"

"Look out the window."

I carried the phone with me and walked over to the window to peek through the blinds. It had started to snow, a wet and heavy snow that promised to last for hours. "Just what am I looking for?"

"Figure it out."

I craned my neck and sure enough, there was a limo double-parked in front of my building. The deli's distinctive red and white sack dangled from an arm extending out from the curbside rear window. No wonder the delivery had taken so long. 

"Why don't you come up here instead?"

"We can't have a picnic indoors. It just isn't done."

I sighed again, but only because he expected it to accompany my capitulation. "All right, I'll come down."

"Oh, and bring beer," he said just before hanging up.

'Bundle up', he'd said. 'Bring beer'. I took his words at face value.

As soon as I stepped out onto the street, Napoleon climbed out of the limo. 

"Thanks, Fred," he said to the driver and we watched the limo drive off.

Napoleon handed me the deli bag. 

He'd warned me to bundle up, but he was wearing only a tuxedo. But this is typical of Napoleon—he so often does not take his own good advice. So I exchanged my scarf for the bag and watched him wrap it jauntily around his throat.

I lifted the bag. "I get the pickle," I warned, although he already knew better than to come between me and a good kosher dill.

"Only if I can have all the chips," he bargained. Not surprising. Negotiating is like breathing to him—inevitable as the sunrise.

I nodded. "Fair enough." I looked around as though we were in the canteen at headquarters. "Where shall we sit?"

"Executive dining room, of course." He gestured vaguely down the street. I interpreted that as meaning the small gated park in the next block, where we'd enjoyed a few lunches and chess games on our off time.

"When only the best will do," I murmured, thinking of my apartment only feet away. At least Napoleon would be warm and dry there.

As we walked I unobtrusively positioned myself on his left, between him and the street exposure. 

He tilted his head, smiled gently and shot a sideways glance at me. "I'm not drunk, if that's what you're thinking, Illya."

I just shrugged.

Mr. Greenblatt, who ran the corner store, was just closing up shop. "Happy New Year, Mr. Kuryakin!" I was a regular customer, especially of things like coffee, aspirin, iodine and Band Aids.

"Thank you, Mr. Greenblatt. And to you and your family as well," I called back.

We disdained unlocking the gate and instead climbed over it, like schoolboys intent upon some foolish prank. Napoleon's tuxedo did not fare well during this exercise but he did not seem to notice.

The canopy of trees in the park, bare skeletons against the Manhattan sky, did little to protect us from the snow. We bypassed our regular bench since it was occupied by a young couple who looked to be out past their bedtimes and moved deeper into the park.

"Here, this is good." I dusted off the bench as much as possible and we sat, the cleared bench between us serving as a makeshift table. Napoleon spread the bag out like a tablecloth and I pulled two bottles of beer and a churchkey opener from my overcoat pocket. 

"Are you sure you weren't a boy scout in a previous life?" Napoleon grinned at me as he popped the caps.

I shook my head. "Komsomol. I don't think the Boy Scouts of America would approve."

He grinned and saluted me with his beer bottle. "Well, I do."

I handed him his share of sandwich and the bag of chips, and we ate.

Silence between us has always been comfortable, easy. No pressure to rush to fill the vacuum of silence with an endless babble. But tonight's silence was different. Not uncomfortable, never that. Just different.

I knew that if I asked him if everything was all right, or if he wanted to talk about it—whatever it was that had drawn him away from a long anticipated evening—he would respond with some variation of 'I'm fine' and that would be the end of it. 

So I sat on my curiosity and entertained myself with an attempt to count the snowflakes as they covered Napoleon's dark head.

"You aren't wearing your glasses," he said suddenly, looking down at his hands where they clutched the balled up grease paper from the sandwich. 

"An accurate observation," I conceded. I had expected an oblique approach, but rarely do Napoleon's leaps of illogic confound me quite as much as this one did. 

What did my glasses have to do with anything?

"You're not wearing them," he repeated.

And now I felt compelled to clarify. "That's because they're reading glasses."

"Ah, but they're more than that, aren't they?" 

I smiled down at the ground, careful not to let him see. He had seen, _noticed_.

"You didn't have a date tonight."

What he left unspoken was his awareness of how important New Year's is to me, with its tradition of sharing the transition between old and new with someone who is important to me.

I looked away and shrugged. "The person I wanted to be with tonight was unavailable." A simple enough truth, although perhaps somewhat less than completely honest.

He took aim at the nearest trash barrel and tossed the wadded-up paper toward it. "Well, I did have a date tonight. Marsha Blackburn."

The black haired goddess from Translations. "I thought she was engaged."

"They broke up a few months ago."

"She's very beautiful."

"Not your type, though."

"No." I'm the first to admit that my standards of feminine attractiveness are very specific, but I understood that Napoleon's tastes are more egalitarian.

 _Breathing and female_ , was how I'd initially defined his tastes. Although perhaps I had been a bit unfair toward Napoleon with that accusation. 

"Did you know that she also has reading glasses?"

"Many people do."

"Ugly ones, too. Kind of reminded me of yours."

Ah.

"Our evening started out so well. Drinks, dancing, dinner. At the Rainbow Room. "

"Good choice for a night of celebration." I've been to the Rainbow Room a few times but it isn't really my kind of place. 

Actually, this park was more my kind of place. 

"Then the ex-fiancé showed up with his own date."

"Potentially awkward." I was careful to keep any hint of amusement out of my voice.

"You know, I've seen you do it a thousand times, Illya. The way you use your glasses to put distance between yourself and others. And the way you use them to reel someone in."

"A thousand times?" I objected. "That is an exaggeration."

Napoleon laughed and turned his face upwards. "Maybe."

There seemed little to say to this, so I remained silent but also turned my face skyward, to enjoy the tickle of snow against my skin.

"The point is, I recognized the technique almost immediately. It's a little disquieting to be on the receiving end of the rejection." I heard the smile behind the words, the self-deprecating awareness.

Awkward, indeed.

"You don't compromise much, do you?"

"I compromise all the time, Napoleon. It is inevitable."

"Socially, I mean. You said it already—you didn't have a date tonight because the person you wanted to be with was unavailable."

"True enough."

"And I realized tonight that, well, maybe I compromise too much." He looked at me, eyes sharp and discerning and perhaps just a trifle self-mocking.

"I knew Marsha was with the person she really wanted to be with tonight, and decided I deserved the same."

We couldn't see the fireworks but could certainly hear them, almost drowning out the simultaneous chorus of bells and honking car horns.

"And so do you, tovarisch."

Our bottles were empty by now, but still he raised his in a toast and I matched the gesture.

Despite the snow and the cold, I'd not been this warm since I'd come to this country.

Our voices overlapped, as in sync now as we were becoming in the field. 

"Happy New Year, my friend."

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,  
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:  
The year is going, let him go;  
Ring out the false, ring in the true.  
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850


End file.
